Learning Apple’s iBook Author: Part 2

Day two of my life with Apple’s iBook Author finds me deep in re-arranging. I now have a fairly good handle on the many features of the application and have completed another chapter. I only have about eight more to go, but each one has a familiar feel which will help move it along. My goal for publishing this Friday may have been a bit ambitious, but where would we be without ambitious goals – right?

Remember when I said on day one that I would worry about Hyperlinks on Thursday? Well, I lied.

I really wanted to see how my Index would easily jump to different topics so I tried to link it to the pages inside the chapter. It isn’t as easy as I would hope it to be. In fact, I seem to have lost ground working most of the day on this task. I should have waited until Thursday. But let me share with you my dilemma…

The thing that is frustrating me about the bookmarking feature is how to define a new hot link. I can’t seem to get the software to add headings or single lines of text to the book marks.

For those of you unfamiliar with this term, a bookmark in a digital text will allow end users to quickly move from section to section. I even opened up the ‘help’ function to try and see if there were any tricks I was missing. So far nothing is jumping off the page saying ‘do this to get your link to work!’

If you know the trick, please comment and share your knowledge.

I look at my list on the white board for the next step and try to clear my head of the book mark challenge. I know it will come back to visit me soon and I will most likely spend the evening reading other blogs and Mac hints in search of a solution.

The other part of this is how to distribute beyond Apple’s iBook app. You see, I hope I am able to create an inter-active PDF easily when I am finished so that I can share the book with those end users that may not have an Apple mobile devices (yes, they do exist).

But, that may have to wait for later this month.

Back to the book now, that chapter on Digital Voice Recorders isn’t going to write itself!

Carole J. Burns is the Director of the Wakerly Technology Training Center at Marquette University. Follow her on Twitter @burnsy1217.